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,V 










COLLEGE AND THE MAN 



College and the Man 

An Address to American Youth 



By 
David Starr yordan 

President of 
Leland Stanford Junior University- 




Boston 

American Unitarian Association 
1907 



UBHARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAh n 1907 

K^opyrlght Ei)t 
cuss A XXc, N/. 
COPY B. 



.J sx 



Copyright, igo'j 
American Unitarian Association 



Printed hy The Heintzemann Press, Boston 



TO 

JOHN CASPER BRANNER 

(jack BRANNER OF THE ''CORNELL STRUG " ) 
WITH FRAGRANT MEMORIES 

OF THE 

GOOD HARD TIMES OF THE 

EARLY SEVENTIES 

9 



PREFATORY NOTE 

THE substance of this little book, in 
one form or another, I have used many 
times in talking to boys and girls in the high 
schools of America. Part of the matter ap- 
pears in the first chapter of a volume called 
^^The Care and Culture of Men," published 
by Whitaker and Ray, in San Francisco, 
and by their courtesy the paragraphs in 
question are here used again. 



'The whole of your life must be spent in your 

own company J and only the educated man 

is good company to himself y 




N this little book I have a 
plain word to say to certain 
men and women of youth 
and promise who look for- 
ward to making the most they can of 
themselves. It is a plea as strong as I 
know how to make it, for higher edu- 
cation, for better preparation for the 
duties of life. I know those well to 
whom I wish to speak : [to the boy and 
the girl who will heed it, the best advice 
that I or anv one else can give is this. Go 
to College^J 

And you may say : These four years are 
the best years of my life. The good the 
college does should be a great one if I 
mui>t spend all this time and all this 
money, all I have perhaps and all I can 
bori ow, to gain it. What will the college 
do for me? 

It v^ill do many things for you if you 
are made of the right stuff. If you are 
not, it may do but very little. You can- 



College 
and the 
Man 



["] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[12] 



not fasten a five thousand dollar educa- 
tion to a fifty-cent boy. The fool, the 
dude, the shirk come out of college very 
much as they go in. They dive deep in 
the Pierian springs as the duck dives in 
the pond, and they come up as dry as the 
duck does. 

The college v^ill not do everything for 
you. Whatever you are you must make 
yourself. The college will not of itself 
doanythingforyou, but a wellspent col- 
lege life is the greatest help toward all 
good things. Everything depends on 
how you use it. The college means op- 
portunity for growth, for culture, for 
power, for range of enjoyment. If you 
learn to use it rightly all these the col- 
lege will offer you. 

The college will bring you into con- 
tact with the great minds of the past, 
with the long roll of those who thr bugh 
the ages have borne a mission to young 
men and young women, from Plato to 



Emerson, from Homer and Euripides, 
from Shakspereand Goethe, to Schiller 
and B rowning.The great men of all ages 
and climes will become your brothers. 
You will learn to feel, with the ancient 
Greeks, the consolation of philosophy. 
You will turn from the petty troubles of 
the streets to the thoughts of the mas- 
ters. You will learn the art of " walking 
in hallowed cathedrals," whatever may 
be^ your actual surroundings of the day. 
If you once learn to unlock these portals, 
no power on earth can take from you 
the key. Moreover, the whole of your 
life must be spent in your own company, 
and only the educated man is good com- 
pany to himself. The uncultivated man 
looks out on life through narrow win- 
do wi; and thinks that the world is small. 
He also thinks it mean and unworthy 
because the dog-fight in the gutter is all 
that his eye can reach. The man of cul- 
ture hns infinite resources within him- 



College 
and the 
Man 



[13] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[14] 



self, because within himself is the key- 
to all the best that men have thought 
and done since men first began to think 
and act. 

Your college course will bring you in- 
to contact with the great problems of 
Nature. You will learn from your study 
of Nature's laws more than the books, 
can tell you of the grandeur, the power>, 
theimmutability of God. You will learn 
to face great problems seriously. You 
will learn to work patiently at their jso- 
lution,thoughyoumay know that many 
generations must each add its mitts to 
your work before a final answer to any 
problem can be reached. You will Learn 
to know "facts amid appearances,," to 
distinguish truth from the weight of au- 
thority. You will find out some things 
which you will know to be true, eter- 
nally and absolutely true, and beside this 
knowledge the " traditions of ages; ' ' will 
count for no more than the hearsay of 



yesterday. You will learn insensibly to College 
govern your life by the influence of real- and the 
ities and not of shams. You will learn Man 
how little through the ages it matters 
what men say of each other and how 
much it matters what a man does. You 
will learn your part of the law of heaven 
and earth, the law which is ever "solid, 
substantial, cast and unchanging." 

I know that the conceit and flippancy 
of the college student is proverbial. But 
you will find that the conceit of the col- 
lege student who knows something, if 
no t much, is a very little thing beside the 
conceit of a man who knows nothing at 
all. 

Man's life, says Pascal, lies between 
two ignorances: the ignorance of stupid- 
ity ,which imagines that it knows all that 
is worth knowing, and the ignorance 
of wisdom, which perceives the infinite 
disproportion between what we know 
and the great unknown. [ ^5 ] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[i6] 



Your college life will bring you into 
contact with men whose influence will 
strengthen and inspire. The ideal col- 
lege professor should be the best man in 
the community. He should have about 
him nothing mean or paltry or cheap. 
He should be to the student as David 
Copperiield's Agnes, "always pointing 
the way upward." That we are all this 
I shall not pretend. The college profes- 
sors I know are all too human. We have 
lived too early to ripen well. We have 
been soured and starved and dwavfed 
in many ways, and most of us are not 
the men we might have been if we had 
had your advantages for early training. 
But unpractical, one-sided, pedantic 
though the college professor may be, or 
though you think he may be before you 
know him, he is sound at heart and he 
is sure to help you to higher ambitions. 
He is not mercenary, and his ideals are 
thoseofcultureandprogress.He is keep- 



ing the torch burning which you young 
men and young women of the Twenti- 
eth Century may carry to the top of the 
mountain. 

But here and there among us even now 
is the ideal teacher, the teacher of the fu- 
ture, the teacher to know whom is of it- 
self a liberal education. I have met some 
such in my time, and there are many 
more such now than there were when I 
was younger. Here are the names of a 
few of those I knew, and there are many 
more such: Louis Agassiz, Andrew 
Dickson White, Goldwin Smith, 
Charles Frederick Hartt, Burt Green 
Wilder, James Russell Lowell, George 
William Curtis, Daniel Kirkwood — 
it was worth ten years of one's life to 
know well one such man as these. 

I remembervery well the day on which 
as a freshman at Cornell I first met a 
great man. I was wandering across the 
fields on the East Hill above Ithaca, 



College 
and the 
Man 



[17] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[i8] 



when I saw two men in their shirt sleeves 
lying down in the shade of a tree. I went 
up to them, I do not remember why, 
nor do I know what either of them said 
tome. But I came away exalted: my feet 
touched only the high places. I became 
for the time a poet, and reminiscent 
of the wonderful day when Browning 
once "saw Shelley plain," I made this 
record of my experience: 

" Once in his shirt sleeves lying on the grass, 
Beneath the shadow of a chestnut tree, 
I saw James Russell Lowell face to f?xe. 
And the great poet rose and spoke to me,'' 

This is not much considered as poetry. 
It is everything considered from the 
standpoint of the dawning of a boy's in- 
tellectual life. 

Garfield once said that a log with 
Mark Hopkins at one end of it and a 
student at the other would be a univer- 
sity. Such a university would not give 
everything, but it would give a prepa- 



ration for everything and it would yield 
the choicest product of university life, 
— the personality of the scholar. And 
now in the years when men build great 
universities as they once built cathe- 
drals, the one thing hardest to find, and 
rnost precious when found, is the man 
who has the power of moulding young 
m en, the power which was the attribute 
of the great teacher of Williams Col- 
lege. But go where you will, in great 
colleges or small, in institutions meanly 
clothed or in those grandly equipped, 
you will find some man who will be to 
you in some degree what Mark Hop- 
kins was to Garfield, and to know him 
will repay you for all your sacrifices. It 
was siiid of Eliphalet Nott of Union 
College that he " took the sweepings of 
other colleges and sent them out pure 
gold." Such was his influence on young 
men. "Have a university in shanties," 
said Cardinal Newman, "nay, in tents. 



College 
and the 
Man 



[19] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[20] 



but have great teachers in it." "It 
doesn't matter much what your stu- 
dies are/' Emerson once wrote to 
his daughter. "It all lies in who your 
teacher is." 

Again, the power that comes from as- 
sociation withone'sfellowstudents can - 
not be overestimated. Here and there 
some young invertebrate given too 
much money to burn, or, it may be, 
spoiled by home coddling, falls into bad 
company in college and leaves it the 
worse for having entered it. But how- 
ever conspicuous these fellows may be, 
or in what degree in some places they 
may seem to set the fashion, the^y are 
really few in number and weak in influ- 
ence. Most of our apples are not ^vorm- 
eaten at the core. The average student 
enters collegefor a purpose and you will 
lose nothing and may gain much by 
associating with him. Among our col- 
lege students of to-day are the best young 



men and young women of our time. All 
the strong men of the future will be col- 
lege men, for the day is come when the 
man jof force realizes that through the 
college his power will be made greater. 
The college is ready to give him help 
which he cannot afford to lose. And in 
(■.his relation each college man and wo- 
LQan helps to mold the character and to 
shape the work of every other. In the 
German universities the comradeship 
among free spirits, "Gemeingeist unter 
frei en Geistern," in the words of Ulrich 
von Hutten, is one of the noblest ele- 
meiUs in the whole system of higher 
education. The name " College Spirit" 
is applied or misapplied to many differ- 
ent things. But of all its meanings this 
one ii the best: " Comradery among free 
spirits," — one of the noblest gifts of 
the sane college life. 

In his eulogy on his great patron Hum- 
boldt, s.poken half a century ago, Agas- 



College 
and the 
Man 



[21] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[22] 



siz thus speaks of his early life in the 
University of Munich : 

"The University had opened under 
the most brilliant auspices. Almost all 
of our professors were also eminent in 
some department of science or litera- 
ture. They were not men who taught 
from text-books, or even read lectures 
made up from extracts from originrd 
works. They themselves were original 
investigators, daily contributing to the 
sum of human knowledge. And they 
were not only our teachers but our 
friends. The best spirit prevailed am ong 
the professors and students. We v^^ere 
often the companions of their walks, 
often present at their discussions, and 
when we met to give lectures among 
ourselves, as we often did, our profes- 
sors were among our listeners, cheering 
and stimulating us in all our efforts after 
independent research. 

"My room was our meeting place: 



bedroom, lecture-room, study, muse- 
um, library, fencing-room all in one. 
Students and professors used to call it 
the Little Academy. 

"Here, in this little room, Schimp- 
fer and Braun first discussed their new- 
ly discovered laws of phyllotaxy, that 
marvellous rhythmical arrangement of 
the leaves of plants. Here Michahelles 
first gave us the story of his explorations 
of the Adriatic. Here Born exhibited 
hit; preparations of the anatomy of the 
lamprey. Here Rudolphi told us the 
res ilts of his exploration of the Bava- 
rian Alps and the Baltic. Here Dr. 
Dbilinger himself first showed to us, 
his students, before he gave them to the 
scientific world, his preparations of the 
villi of the alimentary canal; and here 
came the great anatomist, Meckel, to 
see my collection of fish-skeletons of 
which he had heard from Dollinger. 

"These, my fellow-students at Mu- 



College 
and the 
Man 



[23] 



College nich, were a bright, promising set, boys 
and the then in years, many of whom did not 
Man live to make their names famous in the 
annals of science."* 

Thus it was at Munich, eighty years 
ago, and the influence of that little band 
of students is still felt in the world of 
science. 

Such a history, in a degree, has been 
that of many other associations of stu- 
dents, interested in other branches of 
thought, in history, in philosophy, in 
philology, in religion. 

We are told that Methodism first ai ose 
in a little band of college students,, in- 
terested in the realities of religion, amid 
ceremonies and forms. 

At Williams College, in Massachu- 
setts, there stands a monument which 
marks the spot where a hay-stack once 
stood. Under this hay-stack three col- 

* Condensed from Agassiz's Eulogy on Hum- 
[ 24 ] boldt. 



lege students knelt and promised each 
other to devote their lives to the preach- 
ing of the gospel of Christ among the 
heathen. Thus was founded the first 
foreign mission of America. 

In my own field I have had this expe- 
rience. 

. In the year 1868 I entered a newly- 
founded university as a member of its 
pioneer freshman class. I wished to be 
a naturalist, and I was the first student 
who had come to the university with 
thait ambition. A special feature of Cor- 
nell University was to be the promotion 
ofsc:ience,andsoyoungnaturalistscame 
from all over the land to make use of its 
advantages. 

We; formed a society, something like 
the little academy of Munich, and in 
this we trained each other. We told each 
other of all that we had seen and how 
we had tried to see it. Nor has this mu- 
tual in fluence yet faded away. 



College 
and the 
Man 



[25] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[26] 



I look over the record of the Cornell 
alumni, and I find that each of these 
men,boys of forty years ago,is now him- 
self the center of a similar circle of 
young men. 

Comstock, Gage and Nichols, profes- 
sors now at Cornell, Trelease in the 
Shaw Botanic Garden, Patrick in the; 
University of Kansas,Branner andDud - 
ley at Stanford, Kellermann and Lazen- 
by in the University of Ohio, Simonds 
in the University of Texas, Holmes in 
the University of North Carolina, Scott 
in Princeton College, Rathbun and 
Hitchcock in the Smithsonian Ins titu- 
tion, Salmon andBarnard in the De part- 
ment of Agriculture, Derby at the head 
of theNational Museum of Brazil, The- 
odore Comstock in Los Angeles, Bray- 
ton in the Indiana Medical College, 
Cushing among the Zuni Indians , a Zu- 
ni chief himself, engaged for years in 
worming out the secrets of their ancient 



civilization, Copeland, brightest of all, 
who first studied with me the fishes and 
birds of Indiana, and who died untime- 
ly, before the world had come to know 
him. 

All of these, in the early seventies, used 
to meet in a little room in Ithaca, and 
to show each other birch-blossoms and 
bacteria and bluebottle flies, and to dis- 
cuss with each other the problems of Na- 
tu.re,those problems ofthe ages, "which 
art: always inviting solution, and which 
are never solved." 

Each of us owes much to the college, 
its professors, its libraries, its laborato- 
ries, but something of the powers of each, 
as teacher or as investigator, has been 
give a by each of the others. 

Many a great genius has risen and de- 
veloped in solitude, as the trailing ar- 
butus grows in the wood and scorns cul- 
tivation. Some men of the finest fibre 
or the sweetest fragrance are like this 



College 
and the 
Man 



[27] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[28] 



shrinking flower of the northern pine 
woods. Poets sing because their souls 
are filled with music, not because they 
have learned the gamut of passions in 
the schools. 

But all great work in science, in phi- 
losophy, in the humanities, has come 
from entering into the work of others . 

There was once a Chinese emperor 
who decreed that he was to be the Fir? t ; 
that all history should begin with him, 
and that nothing should be before hi.m. 
But we can not enforce such a decr^ee. 
We are not emperors of China. The 
world's work and the world's ex peri- 
ence does not begin with us. We \Tiust 
know what has been done before ue;. We 
must know the paths our predece;ssors 
have trodden if we would tread them 
further. We must stand upon their 
shoulders — dwarfs upon the shoul- 
ders of giants, if we would look farther 
into the future than they. Science, lite- 



rature, statesmanship, cannot for a mo- 
ment let go of the past. 

Thoreau lived in the woods by the 
side of Walden Pond and spoke lightly 
of the influence of Harvard College. 
But he had the librarian's card of Har- 
vard College in his pocket, and on the 
table of birch-bark were books from the 
college library which Harvard College 
taught him to read, and these books, as 
well as the influences of Walden Pond, 
produced those clear-cut sentences of 
his which we so much admire. Walden 
Pond alone could not do it. Walden 
Pond and Concord Woods produced 
the screech-owl and the loon and the 

" Men of wild habits. 
Partridges and rabbits," 

of which their historian tells. 

Harvard College did not make Tho- 
reau, for it turns out for every Thoreau, 
or Eiaerson, or Lowell, or Sumner, a 
hundi'ed idlers or cynics ; but she cer- 



College 
and the 
Man 



[29] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[30] 



tainly did make Thoreau worth more 
to the world than he would have been 
had his whole life been spent on the 
shores of Walden Pond. 

There was once in the North of Scot- 
land a common — or, rather, a very 
uncommon — stonecutter. He had no 
schools but the quarries and the moun- 
tains — no schoolmaster but nature. 
Yet when Agassiz came to visit Crom- 
arty and Stromness in search of fossil 
fishes, he found that in these quarries 
was a man who could give more of the 
testimony of these rocks than could 
the great naturalist himself. Hugh 
Miller knew Stromness as no one else 
could, yet another great geologist of 
that time, Alexander Von Humboldt, 
knew the whole world almost as much 
as Hugh Miller knew Stromness,. The 
man of the schools had entered in to the 
labors of his predecessors, while the 
stonecutter had been compelled to hew 



his own path unaided, and great as he 
was, his pathway led little beyond the 
confines of Stromness. 

The chances are that you are neither 
a Robert Burns nor a Hugh Miller, and 
if you are left to work out your own 
education unaided, you will probably 
never do it. The stimulus of daily duties 
is needed to bring out your strength. 
There is nothing like the steady pres- 
sure of the schools to enforce habits of 
mental diligence.Theunschooledmind 
rebels at steady work — but it is the 
steady work that counts. The great 
lights of history are not flash-lights. 
The race is not always to the swift, but 
to him who has the staying power. He 
will know a pop-gun from a cannon, 
and as Emerson says, "he will not 
quit his belief that the pop-gun is a pop- 
gun, though all the ancient and honor- 
able of the earth affirm it to be the crack 
of doom." 



College 
and the 
Man 



U 



^ 



[31] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[32] 



The college teaches men the value of 
team work. This is one of the lessons 
for good which come from college 
athletics. College men learn to pull to- 
gether, to yell together, to work to- 
gether, each one subordinating himself 
to the success of the whole. The me- 
thods which honorably win in a foot- 
ball game will win anywhere else. [Let 
college men stand together in public 
affairs, and they will wield an influence 
which no other group of men can with- 
stand. For college men know how to 
do this, and to do it for the sake of an 
ideal, not for money or for notoriety. It 
has been well said of President Roose- 
velt, a typical college man in public life, 
** Money can never defeat a man who is 
not working for money." 

Again, the training of the colleges em- 
phasizes the individuality of a man. It 
takes his best abilities and raises them to 
the third or tenth power, as we say in 



algebra. It is true that our colleges have 
tried and many of them still try to sup- 
press individuality, to cast all students 
in the same mold. To do something of 
the kind, to make each student a typical 
gentleman or a typical clergyman, was 
for centuries the ideal of more than 
one of the English colleges from which 
the American college took its early 
form. Musty old men in the dust of 
libraries, "who knew no use for the 
hands save to hold an old book in them,' ' 
have tried to make young men like 
themselves. "The sceptre of the Ro- 
man emperor has crumbled into dust," 
says Rasmus Anderson, "but the rod 
of the Roman schoolmaster is over us 
still." The colleges have place'd memo- 
ry above mastery, glibness above since- 
rity, manners above manhood, and the 
disputes of the dead past above the work 
of the living present. 
But say what we will of old methods. 



College 
and the 
Man 



[33] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[34] 



and in my time I have my self said a good 
many hard things and I may say them 
again, they were often effective towards 
great ends. The individuahty of the 
youth burns through the cast-iron cur- 
riculum. He does his own work, thinks 
his own thoughts and lives his own life, 
and the man is much more the man he 
ought to be for giving these years to 
higher thoughts and to the nobler com- 
radery of the college men. 

There has been a steady progress in 
the development of university ideals in 
America. The old motto of Winchester 
College in England is this: "Manners 
make the man." We have passed beyond 
this. We have learned that manners are 
outside the man. They serve their end 
by making the man more agreeable and 
more effective, but manhood wanting, 
it is of little consequence what the 
manners are. If manners make the 
man, solely by raising him from the 



rude class of workers to the choice 
class of idlers, they have served no good 
purpose whatever. An early ideal of 
college education was just this, to raise 
a man from one class to another, from 
the caste in which he must work for 
others to the finer one in which others 
would work for him. In all these mat- 
ters scholarship in itself availed but 
little. Mental training was but an ac- 
cessory to social training, and in the his- 
toric colleges of England, the ultimate 
ideal of education is still a social one. 
In the universities of Germany the so- 
cial side has been scarcely considered. ,, 
The German mind ploughs deeply. It 
goes to the bed-rock, and on almost all 
questions the last word is said by Ger- 
man erudition. The value of thorough- 
ness is the great lesson which Germany 
has given to modern civilization, and 
our American colleges have not been 
slow to heed this lesson. 



College 
and the 
Man 



[35] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[36] 



But after all, the purpose of higher 
education in America is not erudition 
any more than it is social perferment. 
It is found in the development of 
individual effectiveness. Education is 
needed in the business of living. The 
man is worth more to the community 
and more to himself in proportion as 
he realizes his native possibilities. His 
w^ork may deal with great things or 
with small ones. His aims may be ar- 
tistic, scientific, philanthropic, com- 
mercial, selfish or altruistic; the more 
capable the man in attaining these 
aims the better it is for all other men. 
" There is always room for the man of 
force, and he makes room for many." 
"America," says Emerson again, 
"means opportunity." We look up to 
no class of men: we look down on 
none. There is no class of men whom 
we wish to uphold, and no other class 
whom we wish officially or socially to 



degrade. We would develop all the 
latent talent of the youth of our com- 
munity, the most precious of all its pos- 
sessions, as President White used to 
say, and we would give this talent the 
chance to make itself effective. This is 
the highest purpose of the American 
public school, and the American uni- 
versity, whatever its form, in its essence 
must always be a public school, a crea- 
ture and a creator of democracy. 

It is not true that this ideal of effec- 
tiveness is essentially a commercial one, 
that the higher education in America 
is conditioned by dollars and cents. It 
asks that each man do well the work 
he has to do. Whether in engineering 
problems or financial organization, 
whether in pure science or in art, it 
asks that whatever is done should be 
done wisely and well. It should be done 
with brains and energy, with deftness 
and taste, with courage and conscience, 



College 
and the 
Man 



[37] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[38] 



and this is the ideal of effectiveness. 

Throughout the world, the best of 
our Americans are counted among 
those who bring about results. To be 
with "him that overcometh," to learn 
his methods and to share his spirit is 
a good reason why you — the boy to 
whom I write these words — should go 
to the American college. 

To do small things does not take 
much preparation. But it is as easy to 
do great things as small if you only 
know how. The need of great things 
is about you everywhere. You have but 
one life to live — make this one count. 
And for doing great things when the 
time comes, the best preparation is to 
practice on the smaller ones. And a 
graded series of these smaller tasks 
which lead to larger ones it is the aim 
of the American college to prepare. 

It is true that great men in other days 
have set their own tasks, gained their 



own training, and made the world bet- 
ter at last for having lived in it. Abra- 
ham Lincoln grew up in the woods of 
SpencerCounty,Indiana, training him- 
self to the mastery of language by the 
burning hickory bark on a frontier 
hearth. Other Lincolns may do the 
same in future days. So often as Lin- 
colns are born in a land of freedom, in 
some fashion their power will be felt. 
But the Lincoln of to-day will use every 
help he finds about him. The help of 
the state university costs but little 
more than the shagbark hickory, and 
his strong arm is good for the differ- 
ence. The Lincoln of your century, 
like the Lincoln of the last, will be a 
self-made man. All men of force and 
individuality are self-made men in this 
sense, but they are not made without 
material. Your self-made Lincoln of to- 
day will use the best tools he can find 
in the making. And the best tools 



College 
and the 
Man 



[39] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[40] 



which wise men know how to make, 
tools of books, of apparatus and of 
methods, are gathered together in the 
college. As matters are in America 
to-day, the education gained through- 
the pine-knot on the cabin hearth is 
not an evidence of perseverance. It is 
rather a sign of indifference, the mark 
of a man careless as to the best way of 
doing things. A training which fails to 
disclose the secret of power is unworthy 
the name of Education. 

I have spoken thus far of the college 
as though all colleges were alike. In 
a way, they are. They all aim at exal- 
tation of the mind, but they differ 
very much in breadth, in honesty, and 
in effectiveness. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, they differ in their aims, and 
in the kind of men to whom these 
aims appeal. You must learn to feel 
this difference and to seek among them 
the men and things you need. It is no 



part of my purpose to discuss these dif- 
ferences. That is your part. All col- 
leges have a message, and all have a 
message for you; and it is for you to 
listen to the one that speaks in clearest 
tones. 

Again, the educated man has the cou- 
rage of his convictions because the edu- 
cated man only has any real convictions. 
He knows how convictions should be 
formed. What he believes he takes on 
his own authority, not because it is in 
the newspaper he reads, in the creed 
of his church, or in the platform of 
his party. So he counts as a unit in 
every community, not as one of the do- 
zen, the hundred, who can be counted 
to vote at the word of their party lead- 
ers. To "see things as they really are" 
is one of the crowning privileges of the 
educated man. To help others to see 
them so is one of the greatest services 
he can render to the community. 



College 
and the 
Man 



[41] 



College But you may say, all this may be fine 
and the and true, but it does not apply to my 
Man case. I am no genius. I shall never be 
a scholar. I want simply to get along. 
Give me such an education that I can 
keep accounts, or teach school', or run 
an engine, and not have to work out 
of doors in the winter, and I shall be 
satisfied. Any kind of school will be 
good enough for me. 

"The youth gets together his mate- 
rials," saysThoreau, " to build a bridge 
to the moon, or perchance a palace or 
a temple upon earth, and at length the 
middle-aged man concludes to build a 
woodshed with them." 

Now why not plan for a woodshed 
at first and save all this waste of time 
and material? But the very good of it 
all lies in the effort for the higher 
things. So long as you are at work on 
your bridge to the moon you will shun 
[ 42 ] the saloon and we shall not see you on 



the dry-goods box in front of the cor- 
ner grocery. The man who sets out in 
life to build one great temple is the one 
who ends in building many. " I never 
dreamed that I could do so much." 
This is the experience of the man who 
has learned to save his time, to seize 
his opportunities, and to do all things 
well. There is many a man who spends 
his life in a woodshed who might have 
built a temple if he had only begun 
right. 

It does not hurt a boy to be ambitious. 
In the pure-minded youth ambition 
is the sum of all the virtues. Lack of 
ambition means failure from the start. 
The man who is aiming at nothing and 
cares not to rise is already dead. Only 
the sexton and the undertaker can 
serve his purposes. The great army of 
the unemployed and of the unemploy- 
able now disturbing the social peace of 
England, is made up of those who work 



College 
and the 
Man 



[43] 



College 

and the 

Man 



^ 



[44] 



in the way they call "ca' canny" in 
the British factories. "Ca' canny" is 
to do as little as possible so as to make 
the job go as far as it can. By and bye 
there are no more jobs, or they go to 
some one else. If a man has a right 
to work, the work has a right to the 
man. It must ask him to do it with a 
snap. If one is not willing to do his part 
on the earth, he would, as Mark Twain 
puts it, better "be under it — inspiring 
the cabbages." It is said that the mod- 
ern philosophy of labor is to do a 
little less work all the time, and al-^ 
ways for a little more pay. Against 
this is set the blunt wisdom of Gene- 
ral Booth in his talk to English work- 
men: "Perhaps you have the foolish 
notion that there is an easier way of 
living than by hard work. This is sil- 
ly. The easiest way of earning a liv- 
ing is by working for it and taking a 
delight in your work." 



The old traveler RaiSnesque tells us 
that when he was a boy he read the voy- 
ages of Captain Cook and Le Vaillant 
and Pallas, and that he was inspired to 
be a great traveler like them. " And so, 
I became such," he adds shortly. If you 
say to yourself — I will be a historian, 
a statesman, an artist, an engineer: if 
you never unsay it, if you take advan- 
tage of every aid which comes in your 
way and reject all help which would 
turn you aside, you willsometime reach 
your goal, l^he world turns aside to let any 
man pass who knows whither he is going! 

But a college education costs money, 
you may say. I have no money, there- 
fore I cannot go to college. But this is 
nonsense. If you have health and 
strength and no one dependent on you, 
you cannot be poor. There is no greater 
luck that a young man can have than 
to be thrown on his own resources. I 
know that the air is filled with the 



College 
and the 
Man 



t-- 



[45] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[46] 



dolorous whine that the poor man has 
no chance, the rich grow richer while 
the poor grow poorer, that opportuni- 
ties are all taken and that there is not 
enough money or work to go around. 
There is some truth at the bottom of 
this cant, but none to the young men 
of spirit. Never since the world began 
has he found such opportunities as now. 
Wealth and poverty, success and fail- 
ure, happiness and misery rest more and 
more on the man and the man's own 
deserts, less and less on society. If you 
choose failure and misery you will ^^\. 
it more surely than men did a hundred 
years ago. It will come more quickly 
and may-be last longer. But the same 
is true of success if you choose that. 
The whole thing rests with you, with 
you yourself, — not with your grand- 
father nor with the set into which you 
were born. Do a little more than you 
are paid to do, and men will be eager 



to pay you more, but always on the 
same strenuous conditions. 

There are only two castes in America, 
the one which tries to get more than it 
earns, and the one which tries to earn 
more than it gets. The first class is 
divided into two suborders, those who 
succeed — the idle rich, and those who 
fail — the idle poor. 

And in our country, in our day, the 
odds are against the rich man's son. Of 
the many college men who have risen 
to prominence in my time, the great 
majority were college boys who had no 
.wealth to back them. 

In the early days of Cornell Univer- 
sity there was a boarding club of poor 
students, the "Struggle for Existence" 
it was called, but later even letters be- 
came expensive and "the Strug" was 
the only name it could afford. Its mem- 
bers worked at all kinds of jobs, what- 
ever would help to make both ends 



College 
and the 
Man 



[47] 



College 

and the 

Man 



meet. They lived " close to the bone," 
as the old phrase is, but they carried it 
through, and to-day there are more suc- 
cessful men who have graduated from 
"the Strug" than from any other club 
or organization within my Alma 
Mater. 
iN The rich man's son may enter college 
with better preparation than you, he 
may wear better clothes, he may feed 
at a finer table, he may graduate 
younger, but you can make up for lost 
time by cleaner grit. You will step from 
the Commencement stage into no un- 
known world. You have already meas- 
ured swords with the great antagonist 
and the first victory is yours. It is the 
first struggle that counts. There is no 
virtue in poor food or in shabby cloth- 
ing. Too long experience with such 
things will make a man worse instead of 
better. Poverty strikes in. It is not the 
[ 48 ] yoke of poverty, but the effort by which 



you throw it off which makes a man of 
you. If you rise to freedom you gain the 
habit of rising, and the same power of 
effort you can use in a thousand ways. 

If you say : I won't try. I shall never 
amount to anything, I am too poor, and 
if I wait to earn money I shall be too 
old to go to school ! If you say this and 
act accordingly you will never amount 
to anything, and later in life you will 
be glad to spade the rich man's garden 
or to shovel his coal at a dollar a day. 

I once knew in Wisconsin a poor man 
who earns a half-dollar every day by 
driving a cow to pasture. He watches 
her all day as she eats and drives her 
home at night. Thi& is all he does. The 
one balances the other, the one enriches 
the world as much as the other. Put 
here your half-dollar and there your 
man. If it were not for that cow the 
world would not need that man at all ! 

I have heard a father say sometimes: 



College 
and the 
Man 



[49] 



College I have worked hard all my life and I 
and the will give my son an education so that 
Man \iQ ^iU not have to work as I have done. 
The result of this every time is disap- 
pointment, for the manhood each of 
us attains must depend on our own hard 
work. But if the father says: my son 
must be a worker too, but I will give 
him an education so that his hard work 
will count more for him and more for 
the world than mine has done, the re- 
sults may be far beyond the expecta- 
tions of either. The boys who are sent 
to college often do not amount to 
much. From the boys who go to col- 
lege come the builders of the future. 
I said just now that you cannot put a 
five-thousand-dollar education on a fif- 
ty-cent boy. The experiment has been 
tried thousands of times. All our col- 
leges are trying it over and over again, 
and it generally fails. What matter if 

[ 50 ] it does? It does no harm to try. A few 



hundred dollars is not too much to risk 
on an experiment like this. Maybe 
we have undervalued the boy. In any 
case we have given him the only thing 
we can give any man, — that is, a chance 
to be fairly tested. But what shall we 
say of the man who tries to put a fifty- 
cent education on a five-thousand or a 
million-dollar boy, to narrow and 
cramp him throughout his future life. 
Just this is what a million fathers and 
mothers in America to-day are trying 
to do for their sons and daughters. 
Twenty years hence these young men 
and women will blame these parents 
for their shortness of sight and narrow- 
ness of judgment, weighing a few pal- 
try dollars, soon earned, soon lost, 
against the joy and power and useful- 
ness which come from thorough men- 
tal training. For a man to have died 
who might have been wise and was 
not, this I call a tragedy! Something 



College 
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Man 



[51] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[52] 



like this was once said by Thomas 
Carlyle, and something like it has been 
said or thought by thousands of men 
when the time was past in which they 
could find a remedy. 

A young man can have no nobler 
ancestry than one made up of men and 
women who have worked for a living 
and who have given honest work. The 
instinct of industry is in the blood. 
Some naturalists believe, though I do 
not, that the habits of one generation 
are inherited by the next, reappearing 
as instincts. Anyhow it is easy to inher- 
it laziness, easier still to develop it; 
and no money or luck will bring the 
lazy man to the level of his industrious 
neighbor. 

The industry which grew with the 
pioneer life of the last generation is 
still in our veins. Sons of the western 
pioneers, ours is the best blood in the 
realm. Let us make the most of our- 



selves. If you cannot get an education 
in four years, take ten years. Take all 
the time you need. It is worth your 
while, and your place in the world will 
wait for you till you are ready to fill 
it. 

When I was a boy on a farm in the 
Genesee Valley in New York, a friend 
whose name, John Lord Jenkins, I 
write in gratitude, advised my parents 
to send me to college. " But what will 
he find to do when he gets through 
college?" they asked. "Never mind 
that," said Dr. Jenkins, "he will al- 
ways find plenty to do. There is always 
room at the top." Always room at the 
top. I have heard a thousand men say 
that since, but then the word and 
thought were new to the boy. "Al- 
ways room at the top, but the eleva- 
tor isn't running." If you want to reach 
the top, you must climb for yourselves. 
All our professions are crowded in 



College 
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Man 



[53] 



College America. That any one can see, but 
and the the crowd is all around the bottom of 
Man tJ^e ladder. The man who knows his 
business and who loyally does his best 
never finds his way hampered by com- 
petition. It may take a little while to 
show his mettle, but the right place 
will find the right man. Accident 
aside, sooner or later, in our country, 
every man finds just the recognition 
to which he is entitled. He gets just 
about what he deserves. If he is worthy 
of something better than he gets, be- 
cause he does more than he is paid for 
— then something better is sure to open 
before him. The crowd is around the 
bottom of the ladder. 

Do not say that I expect too much 
from persistent resolution, that I give 
you advice which will lead you to fail- 
ure. For the man who will fail will 
never take a resolution. Those among 

[ 54 ] you whom fate has cut out for nobod- 



ies are the ones who will never try! 
Frederick Denison Maurice tell us 
that "all experience is against the no- 
tion that the best means to produce a 
supply of good ordinary men is to at- 
tempt nothing better.'* "I know," he 
says, "that nine tenths of those the 
university turns out must be hewers 
of wood and drawers of water, but 
if you train the ten tenths to be so, the 
wood will be badly cut and the water 
will be spilt. Aim at something no- 
ble, make your education such that a 
great man may be formed by it, and 
there will be a manhood in your lit- 
tle men of which you do not dream ! " 
" You will hear every day around you ' ' 
— this Emerson once said to the divini- 
ty studentsat Harvard — "You will hear 
every day around you the maxims of a 
low prudence. You will hear that your 
first duty is to get land and money, place 
and fame. What is this which you seek ? 



College 
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Man 



[55] 



College 

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Man 



[56] 



What is this beauty ? men will ask in de- 
rision. Nevertheless, if God have called 
any of you to explore Truth and Beau- 
ty, be bold, be firm, be true! When 
you shall say, *As others do, so will I. 
I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early 
visions. I must eat the fruit of the land 
and let learning and romantic expecta- 
tion go until a more convenient season.' 
Then dies the man in you. Then once 
more perish the buds of art and poetry 
and science as they have died already in 
a hundred thousand men. The hour of 
that choice is the crisis in your history!" 
But you may ask me this question: 
Will a college education pay, consid- 
ered solely as a financial investment? 
Again I must answer yes, though the 
scholar seldom looks upon his power 
as a financial investment. He can do 
better than to get rich. The true schol- 
ar will say, as Agassiz once said to a 
Boston publisher, "I have no time. 



sir, to make money." It is also true 
that in certain kinds of wealth-pro- 
ducing, an enlightened mind is no 
help, but rather a hindrance. But this 
is not the career toward which you are 
looking. If it is, I am not speaking to 
you, and I am sure you would not lis- 
ten if I did. The world does not owe 
you a living, and will only grant it to 
you, I hope, in exchange for something 
better than what it gets from others. 
If money is all you want it will divide 
your interests and confuse your purpos- 
es if you grow fond of something else. 
But if you ask for effectiveness in the 
conduct of life, the broader your out- 
look the wiser will be your actions. 
Education is better than ignorance. 
It is more practical, as light is more 
practical than darkness. To be enlight- 
ened is to know what is worth doing ; 
to be trained is to know how to do 
it; and the work of the college is to 



College 
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[57] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[58] 



give both training and enlightenment. 

We shall not measure a man's success 
by the amount of taxes he pays nor by 
those whose payment he escapes. Any 
one of our railroad magnates or bo- 
nanza kings gains more money in a 
month than any scholar in Christen- 
dom can earn in a life-time. Tested 
by our standard, is this success ? If so 
you measure it, it is not to you I speak. 
I know a dog that has buried more 
than a hundred bones in his master's 
garden, and yet he is not on the whole 
very much of a dog. 

We speak sometimes of the college 
course as distinct from the course of 
the university. In America, college and 
university are very much blended to- 
gether, and they will doubtless remain 
so. The college course strictly speaking 
is intended to make a man of you. The 
university is to fit this man for his spe- 
cial work in the world. But in our talk 



here, we may speak of both together 
as college education, for in America 
the two forms of education are not 
separated in spirit or in fact. 

But this is true — the college train- 
ing, the university education, will not 
make you a millionaire. The acquisi- 
tion of great wealth is a specialty, the 
gift for which comes to but few, not 
always to those who most value it. The 
inheritance of great wealth is a thing 
very different from the creation of it ; 
and again, to gather is not to create. 
Mere inheritance is an anachronism, 
a belated custom of feudal times, 
which civilized nations have not yet 
abolished. Money inherited is more 
often than otherwise a misfortune to 
the individual whose life it overshad- 
ows and sterilizes. Creation of wealth, 
like all forms of creation, should en- 
noble and strengthen: gathering de- 
pends on the methods of the gatherer. 



College 
and the 
Man 

J 



[59] 



College But leaving all these questions aside, 
and the in our nation of working men and wo- 
Man jnen it is true that the educated man 
gets the best pay. Brain work is higher 
than hand work; skilled labor is better 
than muscle labor. It earns more money 
and it is better paid. And as industries 
progress and grow differentiated this 
distinction will be greater and greater. 
The man with the mind is the boss, 
and the boss receives a larger salary 
than the hands whose work he directs. 
All development of skill in labor is a 
form of education. The unskilled la- 
borer should not exist in a free country. 
For with any degree of political free- 
dom he can never be free. If he were, 
he would be a skilled laborer. The 
unskilled man has not made the most 
of himself and hence he is by nature a 
slave, a slave to destructive habits, a 
slave to the tyranny of capitalists, or to 

[ 60 ] the parallel and fiercer tyranny of his 



brother workmen. What the unskilled 
laborer can do, a hod of coal and a 
bucket of water will do better if han- 
dled by skill — if directed by some man 
of education. To save the unskilled la- 
borer from the bonds into which igno- 
rance suffers him to fall is the purpose 
of our public school system. The truth 
makes free, and it has the same influ- 
ence all along the educational line from 
the primary school to the university. 
This is the justification of the public 
school system, and the same justifica- 
tion holds for every part of it. 

Everywhere in our professions it is 
the trained men that take the lead. 
Among our teachers, our preachers, 
our lawyers, our doctors, our politicians 
even, the college men stand at the head. 
Short-sighted and foolish is the young 
man who goes into the sharp competi- 
tion of life without the best aid that 
lies within his reach. 



College 
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[6i] 



College 

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[62] 



Some time ago Chancellor Lippin- 
cott, of the State University of Kansas, 
wrote to each of the graduates of that 
institution asking each to state " briefly 
the advantages vi^hich your experience 
proves that you derived from your uni- 
versity life and work." 

Here are some of the answers : 

One says : 

"My love for the State grew with 
every lesson I received through her 
care. I saved five years of my life 
through her training and I am a more 
loyal and a better citizen." 

Another had 

" A better standing in the community 
than I could have gained in any other 
way." 

Another 

" Would not exchange the advantages 
gained for a hundred times their cost to 
the State or to myself." 

Another found it 



"Financially the best investment I College 
ever made." and the 

Another had ^^« 

" The gratifying feeling that I know 
at least a little more than is absolutely 
necessary for making my living." 

Still another received 

" Strong friendship v^ith the most in- 
telligent young men of the State, those 
who are certain largely to influence its 
destiny." 

And in similar vein, the rest. Thus it 
is in Kansas, and thus it is everywhere. 
For the young man or woman of char- 
acter, the college education does ^^pay," 
from whatever standpoint you may 
choose to regard it. 

We are proud and justly proud of our 
common school system. The free 
school stands at every northern cross- 
road and is rapidly forcing its way into 
the great new south. Every effort is 
made to elevate the masses. There is no [ 63 ] 



College 

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Man 



[64] 



upper class reaping the benefits of an 
education for which the poor man has 
to pay. There is no caste, educated and 
ruhng by right of birth ; no hereditary 
house t)f Lords. Our scholars and our 
leaders are of the people, from the 
people. 

The American plan has made us an 
intelligent people. The number of 
persons ignorant or indifferent is less 
in our northern states than in England 
or Germany or France. But for our 
number, we have fewer educated men 
in America than have any of these na- 
tions. In literature, in science, in phi- 
losophy, we still go to Europe for our 
models. In mechanical invention we 
lead the world, for there is no one who 
so readily adapts circumstances to his 
purposes as the American. But in every 
other department of thought, Ameri- 
can work has been contented to bear the 
stamp of mediocrity. The world has a 



right to expect better things of us. 
The land of freedom, as Emerson has 
said, has failed, is failing to "satisfy the 
reasonable expectations of mankind." 

All our professions are crowded with 
men who have rushed in prematurely. 
They jostle each other around the foot 
of the ladder — they are unable to as- 
cend. All this is less true to-day than 
it was twenty or thirty years ago, but 
it should not be true to any extent at 
all. 

In the different training schools of 
our states, great and small, many thou- 
sands of young people are gathered to- 
gether to prepare for the profession of 
teaching. Of these not one in fifty will 
remain in school long enough to secure 
even the elements of a liberal educa- 
tion. Fifteen minutes for dinner; fifty 
weeks for an education ! For the lowest 
grades of schools there are candidates 
by the score, but when a college wants 



College 
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Man 



[65] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[66] 



a man for a man's work, it cannot make 
use of these teachers, excellent as many 
of them are in the lower field they have 
chosen. We must search far and wide 
for the man to whom a present offer 
of fifty dollars a month has not seemed 
more important than the grand oppor- 
tunities of a scholar's life. A bird in the 
hand is not worth ten in the bush. You 
cannot afford to sell your future at so 
heavy a discount. 

We say sometimes that the American 
public school exists for the elevation 
of the masses. This is true, but it has in 
fact a higher aim than this. It is to 
break up the masses that they may be 
masses no more, but individual men and 
women. Its aim is to draw forth the 
individual, to make the most of his 
powers, whatever these may be; for 
each man is a separate creation, and his 
array of force in its full range was never 
borne by any man before, nor will its 



exact likeness ever be known again. 
America is the land of the individual 
man. For better or for worse, and on 
the whole for better, each man in our 
country lives his own life, and on his 
own character and training depends its 
outcome. 

We see a regiment of soldiers on 
parade. In dress and mien all are alike, 
— the mass. By and by in the business 
of war comes the call to lead some for- 
lorn hope, to do some deed of bravery 
in the face of danger. From the masses 
steps forth the man. His training shows 
itself. On parade, no more, no less 
than the others, he stands above them 
all when the time for trial comes. So 
it is in other times, in other places, for 
the greatest need of men is not on the 
field of battle. 

In like fashion we see a thousand 
boys to-day at play in the fields of our 
own state. Let us train these boys as 



College 
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Man 



[67] 



College well as we can ; let us try to make them 
and the clean, honest, enlightened. But among 
Man them here and there we shall find the 
future leader of men. Let us raise him 
from the level, or rather, let us give him 
the chance to raise himself — for the 
pine in the thicket needs no outside 
help to place its head above the sassa- 
fras and sumac. If our public school 
system, primary school and university, 
makes our masses into men, if it helps 
the individual to be his most effective 
self, it has given us all that we can hope 
— all that we ought to ask, "The best 
political economy," says Emerson, "is 
the care and culture of men." It is not 
achievement which we ask of it — it is 
aid to individual growth. The glory of 
America lies in the future, not in the 
past; not in what we have done and 
finished, but in the hope of growth. 
We try to do things better each suc- 

[ 68 ] ceeding year, and sometimes we sue- 



ceed, often enough at least to j ustify our 
confident optimism. 

What does the college do for the 
moral, the religious education of the 
youth ? It may do very much if it gets 
at it in the right way, but its means 
must be largely personal, not official. 
"To bring boys and girls into ways of 
righteousness we must let them see how 
righteousness looks when it is lived." 

If your college assume to stand in loco 
parentis, with a rod in hand and spy- 
glasses on its nose, it will not do much 
in the way of moral training. "Free 
should the scholar be, free and brave." 
" The petty restraints which may hold 
in check the college snob and the col- 
lege sham are an insult to college men 
and women." It is for the training of 
men and women that the college exists. 
The college cannot be a reform school. 
It cannot officially take the place of the 
parent. To claim that it does so is mere 



College 
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Man 



[69] 



College 

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Man 



[70] 



pretense. You cannot drive young men 
into ways of righteousness through fear 
of the college faculty. 

This the college can do for moral 
training : it can strengthen the student 
in his search for truth ; it can encour- 
age manliness in him by the putting 
away of childish things. 

Take the dozen students at Munich 
of whom Agassiz has spoken. Do you 
suppose that Dr. Dollinger caught any 
of these cheating on examinations? 
Did the three young men at Williams 
College choose the haystack rather 
than the billiard hall for fear of the 
college faculty? The love of knowl- 
edge, the growth of power, the sense 
of personal responsibility, these are our 
college agencies for keeping off our 
evil. The love which casts out fear is 
the enthusiasm for real work, for the 
higher activities of the higher life. 

As in moral so in religious matters^ 



the college must operate through work 
and through example. The college 
cannot make a student moral or relig- 
ious through enforced attendance at 
church or chapel. It cannot arouse the 
spiritual element in his nature by any 
system of demerit marks. But let him 
find somewhere the work of his life. 
Let the thoughts of the student be free 
as the air. Give him a message to speak 
to other men, and when he leaves your 
careyou need fear forhimnotthe world 
nor the flesh nor the devil ! 

If your Christianity or your creed 
seem to the student to need a bias in 
its favor, if it seem to him unable to 
hold its own in a free investigation, he 
will despise it, and if he is honest he 
will turn from it. Religion must come 
to him as a " strong and mighty angel," 
asking no aid of church or state in its 
battle against error and wrong. 

Whatever the temporary phases of 



College 
and the 
Man 



[71] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[7^] 



the student's thought, he will come out 
all right in the end. He whose mind is 
trained and free stands in no danger 
from the scoffer or the bigot. He will 
not mistake a fly on the object-glass of 
his telescope for an eclipse of the sun. 
This is a practical age, we say, and 
we hold in low esteem all sorts of 
dreams and visions. We ask what is the 
value of truth and beauty, of zeal and 
devotion, of religion and piety, as 
though all these things, for sale in the 
city markets and shopworn through 
the ages, were going at a sacrifice. But 
the practical rests on the ideal. "My 
son," says Victor Cherbuliez, "my 
son, we should lay up a stock of absurd 
enthusiasms in our youth or else we 
shall reach the end of our journey with 
an empty heart, for we lose a great 
many of them by the way." It is the 
noblest duty of higher education, I be- 
lieve, to fill the mind of the youth with 



these enthusiasms, thoughts of the College 
work a man can do, with visions of and the 
how this man can do it. It should ^^^ 
teach him to beHeve that love and faith 
and zeal and devotion are real things, 
things of great worth, things that are 
embodied in the lives of men and 
women. It should teach him to know 
these men and women, whether of the 
present or of the past, and knowing 
them his life will become insensibly 
fashioned after theirs. It should lead 
him to form plans for the part he has 
to play in science, in art, in religion. 
His work may fall far short of what he 
would make it, but a noble plan must 
precede each worthy achievement. 

"Colleges can only serve us," says 
Emerson, " when they aim not to drill 
but to create. They bring every ray of 
various genius to their hospitable halls, 
and by their combined effort set the 
heart of the youth in flame." [ 73 ] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[74] 



I once climbed a mountain slope in 
Utah, in midsummer, when every 
blade of grass was dried to a yellow 
crisp. Here and there I saw a line of 
vivid green across the yellow pastures 
running down to the lake. I could not 
see the water, but I knew that the 
brook was there, for only the flow of 
water can keep the grass as green. Like 
this brook in the hot fields may be the 
life of the scholar in the world of men. 
I look out over the lives of struggling 
men and women. I see the weary soul, 
the lost ambition, 

" the haggard face 
And form that drooped and fainted 
In the fierce race for wealth." 

Here and there I trace some line in 
life along which I see springing up all 
things good and gracious. This is the 
scholar's work and along his pathway 
I trace the growth of love of nature, 
the love of goodness, the love of God. 



For best of all the scholar's privileges 
is that which Dr. Hale has called 
" Lending a hand." The scholar travels 
the way of life well equipped with 
things which others need. He may not 
travel that way again. You know the 
word of the old Quaker, — what he 
does for his neighbor must be done 
where his neighbor is. The noblest 
lives have left their traces not alone in 
science or in literature or in history, 
but in the hearts of men. 

" Some years ago, in a Southern Indi- 
ana neighborhood," William Lowe 
Bryan once said, "I came across the 
traces of a man. They were just as dis- 
tinct and as satisfactory as the traces of 
a vanished glacier. A good many years 
had gone by since the man went into 
Southern Indiana to teach. No great 
experience nor breadth of training was 
his. I know not what methods or text- 
books he used, but in all conditions 



College 
and the 
Man 



[75] 



College 

and the 

Man 



[76] 



of society I could trace the fact that 
this boy-teacher was a man, earnest, 
courageous, inspiring." 

As I have gone about over this coun- 
try of ours, I have found here and there. 
East and West, North and South, in 
cities and in villages, traces which show 
here and there clearly that a man had 
lived. And the best traces of a man are 
shown in the better manhood of those 
who have grown up around him. 

Now you will go to college for better 
or for worse. Where shall you go? 
The answer to this is simple. Get the 
best you can! You have but one chance 
for a college education. You cannot 
afford to waste that chance on third- 
rate or fourth-rate schools. Go where 
the masters are, in whatever line you 
wish to study. 

Look over this matter carefully, for it 
is all-important. Go for your education 
to that school in whatever state or coun- 



try — under whatever name or control 
— that will serve your purposes best, 
that will give you the best returns for 
the money you are able to spend. Do 
not stop with the middle-men. Go to 
the men who know, the men who can 
lift you beyond the primary details to 
the thoughts and researches which are 
the work of the university. 

There is but one thing which makes 
a university strong and useful. That is 
a university faculty, a body of wise 
men, sound and earnest, men who know 
and men who can do along the lines of 
their own precepts. All other matters, 
without this, are of less than no impor- 
tance. Buildings, departments, libra- 
ries, laboratories, wealth and numbers, 
rules and regulations, do not make a 
university. It is the men who teach. 
Go where the masters are in whatever 
line you wish to study. 

Far more important than the question 



College 
and the 
Man 



1^ 



[77] 



-'^C 



College 

and the 

Man 



of what you shall study is the question 
of who shall be your teachers. The 
teacher is not a machine for prodding 
and plodding, to put black marks after 
the names of lazy boys. He should be 
a source of inspiration, leading the stu- 
dent in his department to the farthest 
limit of what is known, inciting him 
to excursions into the infinitely greater 
realm of the unknown. 

Let the school do for you all that it 
can, and when you have entered on the 
serious business of life let your own 
work and your own influence in the 
community be ever the strongest plea 
that can be urged in behalf of Higher 
Education. 



** 



% 



[78] 








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